My name is Richard Ernie Reed. As a sexually abused, psychologically neglected child since I was ten months old, I have been facinated with the question of why do our adult friends and care-takers hate us so much that they visited all of the infinate unspeakable acts of anger and frustration upon us?
Recently I found the answer, in another poet's words. Don Marquis was a reporter, playwright and poet. His muse was a cockroach named Archie who wrote on the poet's typewriter at night about his love for Mehitabel the cat. One night he wrote about Mahitabel and Her Kittens.
well boss
mehitabel the cat
has reappeared in her old
haunts with a
flock of kittens
three of them this time
archy she said to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens
i look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another
i am a dancer archy
and my only prayer
is to be allowed
to give my best to my art
but just as i feel
that i am succeeding
in my life work
along comes another batch
of these damned kittens
it is not archy
that i am shy on mother love
god knows i care for
the sweet little things
curse them
but am i never to be allowed
to live my own life
i have purposely avoided
matrimony in the interests
of the higher life
but i might just
as well have been a domestic
slave for all the freedom
i have gained
i hope none of them
gets run over by
an automobile
my heart would bleed
if anything happened
to them and i found out
but it isn't fair archy
it isn't fair
these damed tom cats have all
the fun and freedom
if i was like some of these
green eyed feline vamps i know
i would simple walk out on the
bunch of them and
let them shift for themselves
but i am not that kind
archy i am full of mother love
my kindness has always
been my curse
a tender heart is the cross i bear
self sacrifice always and forever
is my motto damn them
i will make a home
for the innocent
little things
unless of course providence
in his wisdom should remove
them they are living
just now in an abandoned
garbage can just behind
a made over stable in greenwich
village and if it rained
into the can before i could
get back and rescue them
i am afraid the little
dears might drown
it makes me shudder just
to think of it
of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyhow
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop the in myself
but a mothers love archy
is so unreasonable
something always prevents me
these terrible
conflicts are always
presenting themselves
to the artist
the eternal struggle
betweet art and life archy
is something fierce
yes something fierce
my what a dramatic
life i have lived
one moment up the next
moment down again
but alwayts gay archy always gay
and always the lady too
in spite of hell
well boss it will
be interesting to note
just how mehitabel
works out her present problem
a dark mystery still broods
over the manner
in which the former
family of three kittens
disappeared
one day she was talking to me
of the kittens
and the next day when i asked
her about them
she said innocently
what kittens
interrogation point
and that was all
i could ever get out
of her on the subject
we had a heavy rain
right after she spoke to me
but probably that garbage can
leaks and so the kittens
have not yet
been drowned
Don Mauquis
This was not just a cockroach jumping on typewriter keys. This is the truth. This is the way it is. One human being engendering another human being when he or she can't even cope with his own existence. How can we express the pain of how we feel every day, just trying to get by, just trying to exist in a world we don't even understand. And then to have another helpless, little, crying, wanting, demanding human being in the same room with us, making us feel so helpless
and insignificant. Come on, get real!
(Ya'Know poem.)
But what can we do? How can we cope? How can we stop killing the human beings we love and hate and don't know how to stop hurting? How can be begin to feel? How can be find that sane part of us to stop our pellmell progress to cultural insanity, listening to the thump of roadkill in the night?
(Road Kill poem.)
What do we do? We wait. We wait for wisdom. We wait for maturity. We wait for the day dad shrunk.
(The Day Dad Shrunk poem.)
The cautious ecstasy of freedom. An awakening. A touch of connectedness. And then maybe, maybe, I'll realize that I, and my pain, and my anguish, are not the only things in this would of mine. I will find that you and I are in this room together.
(You and I in this Room Togther poem.)
We are all together, here, now, forever. We are archie, we are mehitabel, we are her kittens. We are everything, and everyone, and all of the pain in this world is ours, and all of the joy, and all of the ecstasy, and the reality, of who we are, what we can be and what we can't be, for ever and ever and ever. Thank you.
